recall
Recall gives Claude Code fully-local project memory — automatic session logs plus a resume-ready summary, entirely offline.
Recall is the rare memory tool that costs nothing per use because it never calls a model — the TF-IDF + TextRank summarizer runs locally, so your subscription credits stop bleeding on re-explaining. The privacy guarantee is genuine: transcripts, paths, and secrets stay in plaintext .recall/ files. If you need cross-device sync or semantic recall, this isn't it — but for a solo dev on Claude Code, it's a straight win.
Verified 14d ago · liveness 66/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/recall
- Claude Code or Opencode users on a local subscription who want persistent project context
- Developers wanting to cut token waste from re-explaining the project each session
- Privacy-conscious coders who refuse to pipe transcripts to a cloud memory service
- Solo developers and small teams working medium-to-large codebases locally
- Users needing semantic, LLM-grade memory rather than extractive summarization
- Teams requiring memory synced across multiple devices or users
- Anyone using AI assistants other than Claude Code or Opencode
We scan live Reddit threads, YouTube comments, X posts, G2 reviews and other communities — and hand you an honest verdict in under a minute.
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Skip Recall if you need LLM-grade semantic summaries, synced memory across devices or team members, support for AI assistants other than Claude Code, or you can't tolerate plaintext logs of your code and potential secrets in the .recall/ folder.
No usage costs — the summarizer runs locally and free — but you must already have a Claude Code subscription or API access for the tool to be useful.
At $0/mo (MIT license), Recall undercuts any LLM-based memory tool — those typically cost $10-20/mo or charge per API call. It fits solo developers and small teams who already pay for Claude Code and want zero additional spend. Unlike paid tools, there's no token metering for memory capture; the trade-off is a simpler, extractive summary.
In short
recall — Recall gives Claude Code fully-local project memory — automatic session logs plus a resume-ready summary, entirely offline. Best for Claude Code or Opencode users on a local subscription who want persistent project context, Developers wanting to cut token waste from re-explaining the project each session, Privacy-conscious coders who refuse to pipe transcripts to a cloud memory service. Free to use.
What people actually say about recall — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
133 mentions across 8 sources (Hacker News, YouTube, Product Hunt, App Store, Bluesky, Stack Overflow, GitHub, Lemmy) · researched Jun 22, 2026.
Average across the 8 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +100% offline and private—no data ever leaves your machine.
- +Zero ongoing cost beyond your Claude Code subscription.
- +Lightweight, easy to install via GitHub clone or pip.
- +Open-source (MIT license) allows customization and auditing.
- +Reduces repetitive explanations across Claude Code sessions.
- −Extractive summarization may miss key context from complex sessions.
- −Only works with Claude Code—no integration with other AI tools.
- −Name collision with many other 'Recall' products causes confusion.
- −No active community or dedicated support channels observed.
- −Summarization quality is not LLM-grade—may feel basic.
- • Requires a Claude Code subscription (Claude Pro or API usage) to function.
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is recall? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: September 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Automatic session logging via Claude Code Stop/SessionEnd hooks
- Local extractive summarization using TF-IDF + TextRank (vendored Python)
- Generates a compact context.md resume summary (~1-2K tokens)
- Append-only history.md log of prompts, replies, files, and commands
- /recall:save command for manual checkpoints
- Auto-save context on session end via auto_save_context: "on_end"
- 100% offline — no data leaves your machine, no API key needed
- Deterministic facts pulled from transcript and git diff --stat
- SessionStart hook surfaces saved context and offers resume
- Opencode support via integrations/opencode
- Works with a Claude Code subscription and spends zero model tokens on memory
- Fenced as untrusted reference data by Claude
- Diffable plaintext logs in the .recall/ directory
- Cross-platform (Linux, macOS, Windows); open-source under MIT
- Custom configuration via recall.config.json; no pip install required
About recall
Recall is a free open-source plugin that gives Claude Code durable project memory without a cloud service. Claude Code starts every session cold, so developers spend tokens re-explaining their project. Recall fixes that by keeping a local record of each session and condensing it into a compact summary that loads into the next one. Everything runs on your machine — no API key, no external model, nothing sent anywhere. It targets developers running Claude Code locally on a subscription, and now Opencode too. The summarization is not an LLM call: a vendored Python pipeline using TF-IDF sentence vectors and a TextRank cosine-similarity graph (PageRank power iteration) extracts the most central sentences from your session. That means capturing and updating memory spends zero model tokens. Recall writes two files into your project's .recall/ directory. history.md is an append-only log of every session — prompts, replies, files touched, commands run. context.md is the overwritten summary: goal, summary, next steps and open threads, files touched, where you left off, plus deterministic facts like git diff --stat. Stop/SessionEnd hooks append new turns incrementally; at session start the SessionStart hook surfaces context.md and asks whether to resume and keep logging. Run /recall:save for a manual checkpoint, or set auto_save_context: "on_end" to regenerate automatically. No pip install, no key to configure, works offline. Against LLM-backed memory tools, Recall is deliberately narrower: extractive summarization instead of semantic understanding, and plaintext diffable files instead of a synced store. It complements Claude Code's built-in CLAUDE.md, --continue/--resume, and context compaction by filling the gap between them. The repo shows 751 stars, 42 forks, MIT license.
Behind the Verdict
Pick Recall when your Claude Code sessions keep starting from zero and you're tired of burning usage limits on context you already gave the assistant once. The extractive summarizer is basic on purpose — it ranks central sentences and wraps them with git facts, producing a ~1-2K token digest you can actually read and diff. Where it bites: extractive summarization does not grasp relationships the way an LLM-backed memory tool might. If your project needs nuanced recall of decisions across weeks, expect a competent log, not a thinking memory layer. It only supports Claude Code and Opencode. Teams on other assistants are out of scope, and anyone needing memory synced across users or machines should look elsewhere — .recall/ is plaintext and local, so shared memory means sharing files. The privacy stance is the strongest part. Transcripts often contain secrets and internal paths; Recall never sends them anywhere, and because the store is plaintext you can inspect, edit, or commit it. Security-sensitive projects should still weigh whether plaintext session logs on disk are acceptable. Compared to heavier memory plugins, Recall is a narrow bet: offline, free, deterministic, no API key, no local model to run. In practice we'd reach for it when the pain is cold-start friction on a subscription, not when the need is enterprise-grade or cross-tool memory.
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas recall actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Start a fresh session after a weekend away; at startup Recall asks if you want to resume from saved context. You accept, load context.md, and pick up where you left off without re-explaining the codebase.
Outcome: You save hours of context-rebuilding time and hundreds of tokens per session, and you never wonder where you were in the project.
Install Recall, enable auto_save_context on session end, and let it log sessions locally. No transcript or summary is ever sent to a cloud API.
Outcome: You get persistent memory across sessions with an absolute privacy guarantee — everything stays in plaintext, diffable .recall/ files you can audit.
Each dev runs Recall locally on the shared repo; context.md tracks the goal, next steps, and files touched, making handoffs between team members faster.
Outcome: Fewer tokens spent re-explaining project state, and the append-only history.md provides a grep-able audit trail of what was done.
Use Cases
- Start a new Claude Code session and instantly resume context from previous work without re-explaining your project.
- Reduce token consumption on your Claude Code subscription by avoiding redundant context setup every session.
- Maintain a private, offline history of your coding conversations for personal reference.
- Integrate persistent memory into your local development workflow with zero cloud dependency.
- Use Recall as a zero-cost way to give Claude Code long-term memory for large, multi-session projects.
- Track the evolution of your project's context over time with condensed session summaries.
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-09-22
Limitations
- Recall is a plugin for Claude Code, using automatic session logging and local extractive summarization (TF-IDF + TextRank) to generate context.md summaries.
- It is fully offline, requiring no API key or external service, and operates locally with append-only history logs.
- Setup involves command-line installation and configuration, and memory is stored per machine without cloud or multi-device sharing.
as of 2026-08-30
Verification history
We have re-verified recall 11 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 11 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published recall tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Open Source
$0/mo
Ideal for
Solo developers and small teams on Claude Code subscriptions who want free, offline persistent memory without additional cloud costs.
What this tier adds
Starting tier: MIT-licensed, fully free, with automatic session logging, local summarization, and manual/auto-save — no paid tiers or feature-gating.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where recall's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
At $0/mo (MIT license), Recall undercuts any LLM-based memory tool — those typically cost $10-20/mo or charge per API call. It fits solo developers and small teams who already pay for Claude Code and want zero additional spend. Unlike paid tools, there's no token metering for memory capture; the trade-off is a simpler, extractive summary.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of recall — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Install takes under 5 minutes: clone the repo, copy the plugin into Claude Code's plugin directory, and optionally tweak recall.config.json. First value is immediate — the plugin starts logging on the next session, and you'll see context.md generated at session end. No API key or external setup required.
Switching to or from recall
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Claude Code's built-in memory: keep CLAUDE.md for rules and add Recall for automatic session recording; it complements rather than replaces --continue and context compaction.
- ↗To Memanto or Reyn: if you need LLM-based, semantic memory, switch to a paid tool — but expect to lose the zero-cost and offline guarantees of Recall.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “recall”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “recall” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about recall.
Official links
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Recall vs Bito
For a solo developer using Claude Code who wants free, private, offline session memory, Recall is the perfect lightweight tool. For engineering teams working across multi-repo projects with coding agents (Cursor, Claude Code, Codex) who need architectural awareness and cross-repo impact analysis, Bito’s knowledge graph and AI Architect provide a comprehensive context layer that boosts task success by 35% and cuts token costs by 47%.
Recall vs Cognition Ai
Recall and Cognition AI solve opposite ends of the AI-assisted development spectrum. Recall is a cost-free, offline memory plugin for Claude Code that helps solo developers or small teams maintain context across sessions without token waste. Cognition AI's Devin is a heavy-duty autonomous engineer for enterprise teams, capable of planning, coding, testing, and shipping production features with tools like auto-triage and legacy modernization. If you're a Claude Code user wanting persistent context without cloud dependency, Recall is a no-brainer. If you manage large codebases and need an autonomous agent that integrates with your whole toolchain, Devin's freemium model and enterprise guarantees make it worth exploring.
Recall vs Poolside Ai
Choose Recall if you're an individual Claude Code user who wants free, offline session memory to reduce token waste. Choose Poolside AI if you're an enterprise in a regulated industry needing custom foundation models, long-horizon multi-agent planning, and air-gapped deployment with full governance.
Popular in Code & Development
Bito
Bito's Governor is an AI model router and code context engine that cuts coding agent spend by grounding every request in your codebase.
Poolside AI
Open-weight agentic coding models — Laguna XS 2.1 and Laguna S 2.1 — built for secure on-prem and air-gapped enterprise AI.
Frequently Asked Questions
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